Post: #1

America is in trouble. Seriously, WTF. I'm so afraid to have a country run by this next generation of fucking pussies.

Post: #2

SheKnows: Experts Among Us

That's the tagline for the website -- which for the uninitiated -- is the largest stand-alone website purely for women.

The website is little more than a hub for female-oriented clickbait which revolves around beauty, cock and feeling better about oneself. This video fits in right in the wheelhouse of "feeling better about oneself." The people wanting to feel better about themselves? Middle-aged wives in Central Time who feel trapped between their boring, predictable husbands, their terribly average kids and their menial, dead-end job. Enter SheKnows.

SheKnows is comprised mostly of self-selected women who want a platform to help other women (in other words, self-promote themselves/their identity). These otherwise unassuming experts hand out..."advice" you could get just about anywhere on the web. The brand of SheKnows is selling the authority of SheKnows by providing an Internet hub where women can congregate and feel safe with a bunch of like-minded women.



Consider the video. It leads off with a tagline about "Content for adults, made by kids." How cool! Not only are we flipping gender stereotypes, we are also inverting ageist concepts of knowledge and experience!

Just like people who thought the "secret" tape "leaked" to the public about Romney's 47% comment (he was wrong, the correct number is 100%) and the video about the racist Oklahoma frat, the women and men watching this video think they are getting "honesty" and "authenticity" from children when they no longer feel put upon by gender stereotypes. You know, when children let down their hair and come clean about "what they really feel" when gendered bullies aren't forcing them into the binary of heteroracist gender norms.

The only problem -- really -- is that those are worries of adults not children. Only adults fret over their "self-honesty" (and feel the need for "safe spaces") and how "authentic" they are to their true selves: you know, not the one they show off at work or at home, the true self that is a yet-to-be discovered pastry or gossip expert for SheKnows.

The children are obviously coached and speak in the pseudo-therapuetic and ideological tongues of their parents (like the girl plainly repeating the nostrum about gendered limitations on boys). The video makes no bones that this video is by adults, for adults with children as the middle-man for the hand-wringing existential angst that only a Gen X'er can truly feel about why they never achieved their "true potential."



Children don't worry about those necessarily adult concerns about one's place in the world -- note that these worries are adult worries, not necessarily mature worries. Children don't lose sleep at night, worried that -- as a male -- they can't wear lipstick at school without being made out to be a fool or parade around in heels at the yearly family picnic. They might fear anxiety, loss of approval or the existential terror of not being loved, but they do not fear not getting into Harvard, limits on creative potential or "being put in the man box." Those concerns strike children as queer and unintelligible, which is why the children sound forced and coached in the video: not because gender stereotypes are arbitrary and based out of inequal distributions of power, but because children don't fully comprehend their parent's anxiety.

To be sure, children often rail mightily against standards, but it isn't until they mature biologically that they start to link standards to personal identity. Children aren't worried they are not going to be the next expert selected by SheKnows for her expertise in blogging; they are not worried about whether they will ever find contentment in a relationship. Children know their parents can be worried about such things, hence we get the boy laughably exclaiming: Crafting! I just love crafting! That poor kid doesn't have a puncher's chance in Hell of finding happiness with this world.

All that statistics and mindless data paraded around in the video is meaningless: nobody remembers whether 72% of boys think "gender stereotypes" hurt them or that only 97% of men have jerked off to porn. What is important is the feel-good message promoted: Don't feel bad about how you are raising your son. So he isn't super smart - so what? You are raising the new breed of male, liberated and divorced from the awful strictures of hyper-masculinity. He isn't judgy, kind and loves animals. At best, he will go on to Harvard Law and achieve success (not dominance) in life through his mind, not his brawn. At worst, you will have helped transform society for the better by raising the new breed of male: the liberated male who can finally stand equal with the liberated female.



The boys and children, here, aren't individuals with their own thoughts, feelings and aspirations. The women and men who think this video has a positive message will invariably fill their boy's heads with conflicting messages about being male. They will discourage their sons from playing with toy guns, but encourage them when they wear red lipstick -- raising a transvestite > masculine man, apparently. Boys, to them, are chess pieces to be manipulated for society's gain -- which also happens to magically coincide with their own personal gain. Weird how that works.

In a world were feeling good has a price and existential anxiety is the norm, parents need something to allay their concerns over their own self-identity, their value as people in this world. Evidently, raising androgynous men, transvestites and future craftsmen helps some parents feel better about themselves. Boys know they are boys; girls know they girls. The queer and forced politics of gender and identity are little more than the projected anxiety of parents and their own perception of their worth and how others see them. Videos like the one OP posted are simply the manifestation of advertisers who know what their demographic wants: to feel better about themselves at the expense of their children's growth and happiness.

Post: #3

0:17 "Which man is sexier?"
This doesn't seem like a question that kids that age are going to be able to truly understand much less answer.

0:41 76% of men have used these phrases..... Source: She Knows Media Male Gender Stereotypes Study March 2015
Their studies are bogus Source: Firestarter review of video March 2015

1:40 "I love crafting"
So do craftsmen, I haven't heard too many people saying building things is unmanly.

They say that male stereotypes are bad but they never define why.

Post: #4

Aside from all the rest, it's a sign of widespread idiocy and historical ignorance that drawing and art are seen as unmanly pursuits. On the contrary, it's a deeply masculine endeavor and has been seen as such since the dawn of art itself. The halls of great art in museums around the world are dominated by men, because artistic representation of the world involves many elements particular to masculinity: dispassionate observation, abstract conceptualization, formal mastery, life experience and intellectual courage.

Clearly, "SheKnows" nothing about masculinity.

Post: #5

(03-22-2015 03:44 AM)Saga Wrote:  Aside from all the rest, it's a sign of widespread idiocy and historical ignorance that drawing and art are seen as unmanly pursuits. On the contrary, it's a deeply masculine endeavor and has been seen as such since the dawn of art itself. The halls of great art in museums around the world are dominated by men, because artistic representation of the world involves many elements particular to masculinity: dispassionate observation, abstract conceptualization, formal mastery, life experience and intellectual courage.

Clearly, "SheKnows" nothing about masculinity.

Indeed. The same ancient men that hunted Bison, Wooly Mammoths and Sabre tooth tigers did art that is the precursor to the art that passed down through the centuries to the modern day. The intricacies and skill in Aesthetics in their Cave Art testifies to the creative aspect of masculinity.

Post: #6

Safe to say that the boys in that video have successfully taken an early retirement into pussification and its obvious benefits (zero).

Post: #7

This is the very definition of concern trolling. I am all about rethinking male stereotypes. However, this video, and the organization behind it, is blatant bullshit.

Post: #8